The Mayo Kébbi is a
river
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of w ...
in
Central and
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
. The river rises in
Chad, then flows west into the
Bénoué River.
Mayo-Kébbi Prefecture in
Chad is named for it. The Mayo Kébbi is the major outlet for
Lake Fianga, shared between
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
and Chad.
In the past, the Mayo Kébbi served as the outlet of the
paleolake Mega-Chad.
[Leblanc et al. (2006). "Reconstruction of megalake Chad using shuttle radar topographic mission data". ''Palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology'' 239, pp. 16–27 1872-616X] The presence of
African manatees in the inflows of Lake Chad is evidence of this, since the manatee is otherwise only in rivers connected to the Atlantic Ocean (i.e. it is not possible that it evolved separately in an enclosed Chad Basin). The grand scale of the Mayo Kébbi river course is also evidence of earlier overflow from Mega-Chad; the upstream catchment of today is far too small to have dug such a large channel.
References
Rivers of Cameroon
Rivers of Chad
Benue River
Lake Fianga
International rivers of Africa
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